Chief Secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra will lay foundation-stone of a Bhubaneswar unit of the National Council for Cement and Building Materials (NCCBM) at the Mancheswar Industrial Estate here on October 23.
The NCCBM is an autonomous R&D institute under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry, with its corporate office at Ballabgarh and units at Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Bhubaneswar.
NCCBM Director General Dr BN Mohapatra informed that the Bhubaneswar unit shall provide third party quality assurance services in the construction sector and technical services in assessment of old structures, retrofitting, concrete mix proportioning and so on.
Earlier, the NCCBM provided third party quality assurance services to the Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) during 2001-2010 and to the IDCO during 2016-2021. Now, it is providing TPQA services to ULBs of Housing & Urban Development Department, the National Building Construction Corporation and other Government entities in Odisha.
As Odisha is having huge quantity of industrial wastes like phosphogypsum, fly ash, red mud and slag, research can be done for the maximum utilisation of these materials in both cement and construction sectors.
Recently, the NCCBM signed MoUs with premier educational institutes in the State like IIT Bhubaneswar, KIIT, Ravenshaw University, Sambalpur University and NIT Rourkela for involving their PhD research scholars in industry-oriented R&D projects, to provide a platform for academia-industry research institute interaction, for getting site work exposure and resource sharing between the organisations .
The construction of new research and laboratory facility of NCCBM at Bhubaneswar will commence soon being completed in 18 months. Green building technologies will be used in the construction.